Appending firmware/hardware dump to vmcore during kernel panic

Hi all,

We have a requirement to collect firmware/hardware state of the underlying NIC during kernel panic. We are doing this in cxgb4 driver, using panic notifier list [1]. cxgb4 registers a callback function to the panic notifier list, which gets invoked during kernel panic. In the callback function, firmware/hardware dump is collected into pre-allocated buffer and then extracted later from the vmcore, for post-analysis.

Is this approach of using panic notifier correct? Any suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,
Rahul

[1] https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/873830/